The Future just keeps creeping in…

That day when the entire house is a computer is creeping up. Streaming the O’s while I work. How? Plugged the laptop into the TV via HDMI, made the TV an extended screen and put Firfox full screen on the TV, and WP fullscreen on the laptop. How wunnerful is dat?

I’m finding that the skating is a really good balance for the writing I’m doing right now. This book is a serious chess game and I’m used to these rather intense, charging forward kinda plots. They’re always complex, but getting all the pieces lined up has never been this much of a challenge.

The front end practically wrote itself, I mean, Wesley and JP meeting after all these years. Seneca. Rani. And a bit of Bijan. It was a lot of information to work in, but there was plenty of spice to keep it moving. Setting everything up for the climax has been challenging. The scenes were coming a few lines at a time.

If I put on a movie, or science or history thing like CJC has going in the background, I get caught up in its chess game because it’s easier. With the full-flight skating, it distracts and relaxes my forebrain for the few minutes of the skate, then there’s lag between to consider the next few lines. Since I started this three days ago, I’ve gotten more writing done than in the month before.

My desktop computer screen has essentially become my TV. But occasionally, I wish I had a really large screen TV to watch an epic movie. The idea of putting my computer work up there, large screen, and having very good resolution (not the old fuzzy TV kind) really is appealing. Not going to happen this year, but maybe in the future.

I did like a recent Apple exec’s quote, an analogy about combining desk/lap (mouse) and tablet/phone (touch) OS’es. The quote was, paraphrasing, “Just because you can combine a refrigerator and a toaster, doesn’t mean it will work well or anybody will be very happy with the result.” This was refreshing common sense.

I love good technology and a good product design. But I want it to be easy and unobtrusive and useful and…fun to use. “Fun” here is a term hard to pin down, but I think most people would know when something is a joy to use.

My primary email’s interface has become…a pain in the posterior to use. I might even switch. (Ugh, changing my email with any and all essential contacts, friends, etc.)

Thinking about things from a science fiction perspective offers so many ways technology can be helpful, used very effectively, and so many ways it could be harmful, divisive, misused, or run amok.

Only I don’t see a malevolent AI taking over as too real for a long time. The number of ways current networks and software have serious bugs, errors, outages…heh, I think it wouldn’t work. Yet. For which, I’m glad. So no Borg or Matrix or the like, for a while, I don’t think.

And…partly because of my personal perspective, I don’t know how long it will really be before we have something like some of the bio-punk or cyborg-punk stuff happening. The trouble with either is, you need a fairly thorough understanding of the nervous system, in order for some things to work, and we’re a long way from that, still. — Which applies to me personally, because of my eyesight. I’d really have to think it over for my “good eye” (which is still a long way from normal vision) and for my weaker eye, hmm…even so, I don’t know. So far, it’s not likely it’ll be a question in my lifetime, though that could change very fast in the next few decades.

But the possibilities, both for good use of tech and for bad use of tech, and how that will affect us all, are very much part of those “what-if” questions, for science fiction or for philosophy. Because we will have to deal with future technology.

When I was a kid, I didn’t expect that as an adult, I’d be able to communicate instantly with people halfway across the planet, or at least as soon as we both get to reply. — Or that books, (vinyl) records, (audio) cassettes, and those awful VCR tapes (hahaha) would all, *all*, end up (along with all my professional training) in a strange, extended transitional no man’s land, a stage between print and storage media, to the all-digital downloads we see now. — And yet that brings opportunities and exciting changes. And as long as it’s on my device or I have web access, I can access it all, carry it anywhere. Oh, the sheer marvel! A full library of information and entertainment, wherever I go! And oh my, access to more, as long as I can pay for it…though the prices are overall still better than if I had to buy all that and store it in physical form.

I suppose one of my main concerns has become how tenuous much of our technology, and our world-wide civilization(s) are. The tech is vulnerable to human ideological frailties and disagreements and short-sightedness. (Even a basic thing like distribution rights and region encoding. Why, again, can’t anyone on the planet buy that book or song or movie?)

But more so, all those human ways of thinking and doing sometimes (often?) get in the way of people getting along, improving their lives. …And that’s beyond the technology, it’s in everything people do.

Our technology’s also vulnerable to environmental and other physical stresses. — A bad storm, whether it’s thunder, lightning, and rain, or snow; or more severe, such as a hurricane, tornado, earthquake … some natural occurrence … and poof! our fancy technologies, all of them, are down partially or completely. — Oops, web access is down, or cell phones, or both. — Or the electricity goes out. — Things like that. — After Hurricane Ike, it was amazing how my (very large) city was thrown all the way back to the 19th century or earlier, very nearly, and how very long it took to reestablish utilities, clear debris, and so on. It gave me a real appreciation for the pioneer families who colonized the US, how they had to live. (Refrigeration, heating and cooling, plumbing and clean water, electricity, cooking inside, medicines, these are all wonderful luxuries.) It showed also that people *could* get along, if they wanted to, and rebuild, without going into total chaos. Heh, imagine the irony of paying your monthly utility bills when you have no service because the entire city still does not, and hoping what your checkbook balance says is what your bank says it is. (Also wondering when services would be restored, because things were so uneven, so incomplete.)

— I’m very grateful for good technology and the chance to make use of it. — I also hope our various governments and businesses will make better decisions, so everyone has equal, fair access, so we don’t create or worsen social problems.

(Meanwhile, I’m awake and taking a break before trying to do anything like work or study.)

I had the ladies’ long program live stream going in the background while at work yesterday so I caught a glimpse of all the skaters, not just the ones NBC deemed worthy for the nightly broadcast.

I miss Johnny Weir commentaries since he does it during the day. I don’t know why they have two different teams commenting on the exact same event – one for the day broadcast on the NBC sports channel and another team for NBC at night.

The winter Olympics in general are a calming factor for me for some reason. I got some doll work done on a few super-late nights with Olympic ice hockey in the background.

Evidently there is a groundswell of support for the announcing team of JW and TL over Scott Hamilton’s cheerleading and sound effects plus s Bezic’s non-original thought commentary. She needs to hear someone else’s opinion before she knows what she thinks. I support Johnny and Tara! Are there things I don’t like about JW and TL? Sure, but Scott Hamilton’s gushing over certain skaters and Bezic’s vapid comments certainly can be done without. As mentioned in the New York Times Johnny is so much more like Dick Button, whom I adored. It’s time for NBC to replace the old guard (Hamilton and Bezic) with the new (Weir and Lipinski).

I need to start echoing between FB and here. I said basically the same thing: didn’t realize the NYT agreed with me! Scotty is one of the greatest things to happen to skating, but he’s not a great commentator. Johnny is AMAZING. Great voice, great insight, kind, and gentlemanly…and he’s brought out a side of Tara I’d never have believed. I’ve never liked her before, but paired with him, she’s great.

I’ve got to put together a post that pulls all my comments over on FB together, but basically DB was the one who taught me what to look for in FS. Then the networks discovered it could make serious money, esp if there was controversy and conspiracy, and his commentary became far more negative, I believe at express orders from the bean counters at the top of the network chain. All the talk of block voting and so forth had a lot more to do with countries that considered skating at least as important as jumping than conspiracies, and the controversy over the “new” scoring system could have been solved by the commentators taking a rational approach and actually learning the system before dissing it. But the last thing the beancounters wanted was something that would prove certain infamous controversies were founded on the notion that a cleanly skated clean program was somehow better than a far more difficult program with a single small fault. (Same controversy as they’re squawking about now with the ladies.) The numbers really don’t lie.)

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